The State of the Republican Party

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's Thursday, January 6th, 2022. One way to look at the events of last January 6th is that the violent break-in at the Capitol has been the focus of too much attention for the past year because the bigger crime was the attempt by Trump and his allies in Congress to block certification of the election through the peaceful political process.

As it happens, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, a member of Trump's inner circle on January 6th, has a new book called Trump Time, that with no apparent shame, describes what they were trying to do, and basically says they would have gotten away with it were it not for the rioters discrediting their moment. Here is Peter Navarro on MSNBC this week describing the plan that they actually had a name for, the Green Bay Sweep.

Peter Navarro: The plan was simply this. We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep. The sweep was simply that we were going to challenge the results of the election in the six battleground states. They were Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada. Basically, these were the places where we believed that if the votes were sent back to those battleground states and looked at again, that there would be enough concern amongst the legislatures, that most or all of those states would decertify the election. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives.

I would say to you here, Ari, that all of this, again, was in the lanes legally, it was prescribed by the Constitution, there is a provision to go, rather than through the Electoral College, to the House of Representatives. All what's required was peace and calm on Capitol Hill. At 1:00 PM, Senator Ted Cruz, and [unintelligible 00:02:15] a Representative, started to Green Bay Sweep, beautifully challenging the results of Arizona.

Brian: That's Peter Navarro. Not the best-known Trump ally but one of the most important on January 6th, speaking with Ari Melber on MSNBC on Tuesday night as they've been saying, saying the quiet part out loud. With me now, Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark, a news and opinion site founded by Conservatives who did not support Donald Trump. Carpenter is also a CNN political commentator and was previously communications director for Senator Ted Cruz.

Her most recent article on The Bulwark site is called sarcastically The Good Coup. In other recent articles, she describes the Republican Party today as a war of all against all and gives her take on why the progressive protests against Joe Manchin have so far backfired. Amanda, thanks so much for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Amanda Carpenter: Thank you. It's a pleasure to join you.

Brian: Your article is called The Good Coup. Peter Navarro denies that it would have been a coup at all. Why do you use that word?

Amanda Carpenter: Well, number one, I want to thank you for getting the sarcasm in that title, because some people have not. [laughs]

Brian: It's pretty clear when you read the text.

Amanda Carpenter: Correct. It is stunning that Peter Navarro is laying out the plan. The reason he is so confident in doing so is because he's right. There was a legal process to do this. Of course, the process was predicated on conspiracies and lies, but that doesn't mean Republicans couldn't have gotten away with it. Had Mike Pence chosen, acted to delay or throw this back to the states, there was a decent chance, and he specifically talks about states such as Arizona, and Nevada, and Georgia, that have Republican-controlled legislatures who would have been willing to decertify that election.

We know this. This continued to play out in Arizona, for example, where there was a many months-long campaign to audit those elections to no end. There were pressure campaigns at the homes of Republican governor in Georgia Brian Kemp, the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. This was very elaborate. It was planned out. We don't know what would have happened had that gone forward.

Brian: Were Navarro and Trump and Bannon, I guess the big three leaders of this plan, simply hoping partisanship would carry the day for Republican legislatures where the Republican Secretaries of State and governors, as you were just describing, had done their job professionally?

Amanda Carpenter: Absolutely. There is a process to ultimately throw the election to a vote in the House of Representatives, and it's a majority vote, but it's not just based on members. It's by state delegations. In that scenario, there's a very likely chance that they would have given it to Trump and you can see that from the vote after. After the Capitol was breached, everyone saw what happened and still 127 Republican members opposed certifying Biden as president.

Brian: Navarro seems to believe that were it not for what your article calls those meddling insurrectionists, there's a Scooby-Doo reference in there somewhere, I guess, were it not for the violent break-in by the pro-Trump mob, they would have gotten away with it. Do you think they would have had the votes in Congress that day or that Mike Pence would have played the role that he would have had to have played?

Amanda Carpenter: It's hard to say. Given what Mike Pence did that day, it is clear from all the reporting that Mike Pence was not on board with this plan. It is also clear from the reporting that this entire pressure campaign in the final days was decided to come down on Mike Pence because they knew he was the weak link. Had he gone the other way, we can't say for sure.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, right now, the most powerful Republican in Washington is dismissing all of this, saying, "Well, you really think if it would have gone to the states, the state legislatures would have decertified Biden as President?" I think that is an open question. He dismisses it. I think it's an open question because what we've seen in the state legislatures to restrict the right to vote based on Trump's election lies over the past year.

Brian: You're right that the Navarro book and interviews show how closely he and Trump coordinated January 6th with members of Congress. What's new there for you?

Amanda Carpenter: The new part in what he is saying is that he compiled these reports. I believe it's called the Immaculate Deception, which essentially was his case arguing how the election was stolen. He presented it to Trump by his own account and by Navarro's own account he says that Trump wanted it distributed to all House and Senate offices. Ultimately, it was distributed to at least 100 members. Navarro says that Steve Bannon acted as the whip for this event. Steve Bannon had 100 members on board with this plan to object to the election results by objecting to the Electoral College votes based on the reports that Navarro compiled.

Brian: Some of them shrunk from playing that role to the fullest possible extent because they were chilled by the riot.

Amanda Carpenter: Not only chilled. Their actions were blocked by the riot. As Navarro says everything was going according to his plan when Ted Cruz started to object to the counts, I believe, in Pennsylvania. At that point, the mob had breached the Capitol and those proceedings were brought to a halt.

Brian: I know you were previously Ted Cruz's communications director. I don't know your relationship with him now. Cruz was cited by Navarro in that clip there, and you just repeated it, as launching this process that he called the Green Bay sweep at one o'clock that day before violence interrupted the session. Cruz, I believe, has never shown any regret for the role he was trying to play that day. How do you understand your old boss and how much he really believes in all this fraud with no evidence of fraud, versus how much he's just been gaslighting the public for political gain?

Amanda Carpenter: Let's see. Just so your listeners are aware, I worked as his communications director until July of 2015. The actions he's taken now, I do not recognize but my read of this is that he is a competitive lawyer, confident in his abilities. He had the chance to present a case that would endear him to President Trump, that could potentially lay the foundation for his next presidential run, perhaps, and decided to take that case and he made it on January 6th, and he'll be forever remembered for it in good ways by Trump's followers and bad ways by, I think, history.

To this day, it appears that he's taken the route that a lot of Republicans have taken in trying to just lay responsibility for January 6th on the people who breached the Capitol who fought with Capitol Police and others, but not the people who summoned the mob to the Capitol that day. That's the real disconnect.

Brian: Listeners, your call is welcome for Amanda Carpenter from The Bulwark on her article The Good Coup, or other January 6th questions or thoughts. Republicans, what is the state of your party a year after the attempted coup? Democrats and independents, you can call too on what the events of a year ago and the big lie for months leading up to it should mean to the country today, or anything else relevant at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

You wrote an article last week called What It means to be Republican in 2022. Inside the GOP it's a war of all against all, it was called. I think to a lot of Democrats listening right now at least, it doesn't look like a war of all against all. It looks like the party is pretty unified in not publicly denouncing the stolen election lie or Trump's whole authoritarian strongman record. Maybe in some of the ways you were just describing Ted Cruz trying to thread the needle, except for a few like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and the large majority of the base around the country is on board with Trump world, too. What's the war of all against all within the party as you describe it?

Amanda Carpenter: I'm glad you set it up that way, because that's exactly why I wrote the piece because I do believe a lot of people who haven't lived through Republican politics, look at it from the outside and think, "Oh, they're all Trumpists, they're all on board of Trump." It's not actually the case. I don't even think life is comfortable for pro-Trump Republicans as long as Trump is leader of the party and the prime example of that is Mike Pence. Mike Pence was as loyal as a Trumper as you could think of, not just by his nature of being Trump's vice president but because he was such a loyal vice president to Trump throughout everything. Through the campaign, through every controversy, through every scandal, Mike Pence never wavered.

Then you look at the party and you have to ask yourself, who does Donald Trump actually like? Mike Pence did everything for Trump, and what did he get for it? A mob summoned by Trump that chanted, "Hang Mike Pence," that day, for the only reason that he would not throw the election for Trump. Then you just start applying that down and you look at all the people who have worked for Trump, loyal Republicans like Mike Pence, who left on terrible terms, only to be smeared by the man, denigrated by him in public and that's not a good place to be.

The majority of these people don't speak out, and they take it because life only gets worse for them when you do speak out. I just think people should look at the string of people, even his administration, Jeff Sessions, Asper, Mattis, Bill Barr, nobody leaves on good-- very few people leave on good terms. Just this morning on CNN, his former press secretary Stephanie Grisham has said that she's going to be working with, I think, 15 former staffers to try to stop Trump in the future. I understand that people outside the Republican Party don't see the opposition and there isn't enough opposition to Trump but there's no happiness either.

Brian: I hear what you're saying. I wonder what would happen if Trump does run in 2024. Will he be running in Republican primaries against Mike Pence, against Ted Cruz, and some of the others who are more quietly or more vocally loyal to him in one way or another even now-

Amanda Carpenter: Brian can I tell you something?

Brian: -but who really feel differently and what that would be like? Amanda, go ahead.

Amanda Carpenter: I'm sorry to interrupt you. I wonder if there would even be Republican primaries in the States should Donald Trump declare that he will run for president because the state parties under the leadership of his supporters, I don't see them staging primary events. That is where I think we are at this point. If someone does want to do it, maybe Liz Cheney, I think it would have to be on a conservative type of independent ticket to even have the appearance of competing against him in a primary.

Brian: I haven't heard this theory before, and tell me if I'm over interpreting it. Are you saying that the subversion of democracy has gotten to the point where states that would in the past have held that have held, of course, in the past, presidential primary elections wouldn't even hold the primary elections? Because that's up to the party. That's not up to the state government, that the party wouldn't even hold the primary election if Donald Trump was running for the nomination?

Amanda Carpenter: I have a very hard time believing the current Republican Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel would want to stage debates in which there would be people opposing and challenging Donald Trump. I find it hard to imagine a scenario where the state Republican Party in a place like Arizona would allow Trump to be challenged on a ballot.

Brian: In with Amanda Carpenter from The Bulwark, Manuel, in North Bergen, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Manuel: Yes. I want to say a couple of things about this. The people right now that coming out saying that it was a legal way of stopping the election of Biden and actually giving it to [unintelligible 00:17:05] it's more dangerous than the people who assaulted the Capitol. Hello, are you there?

Brian: Yes, we're listening.

Manuel: Yes, this is number one. Number two, I happen to be from Spain, and we lived under dictatorships in the 20th Century twice, and I know what it means. In Spanish is called when you overthrow the government elected legitimately is called [foreign language]. Instead of calling it coup d'etat let's call it [foreign language]. Most people in this country are not familiar with the terrible thing of these actions or the consequences. Number three, let's call this people where they are, they're fascist.

I think it's important, the language we use. I disagree completely with the reporter, in saying there was a legal way of keeping Trump in power. With that I'm very emotional and I cannot actually continue, because I think it's very dangerous. I've been in this country 60 years, but my family has been here 100 years. I have grandchildren and I feel very bad for the future of this country if you let the fascists continue and justify these actions. Thank you.

Brian: Manuel, thank you so much. I think that's a really chilling reminder from somebody whose family had experience in a country where there was a democracy, and then there wasn't a democracy, what this looks like what this reminds him of, and that if it were to proceed much further, fascism really would not be an inappropriate term. Amanda, do you disagree?

Amanda Carpenter: No, I'm just reflecting on what he said and stories like the life lived by someone like that caller, the Republican Party used to want to elevate those stories and tell them as a example of why America is special and exceptional and important and that needs to remain true. I want to clarify that when I talk about how there was a legal process that Republicans could have used to flip the election, I don't mean to endorse that process, or say it was just, because it was not. I do you think people need to be aware that these processes do exist by bad actors who are willing to exploit them.

I absolutely agree with the caller that I am more worried about the let's call them insurrectionists in suits, rather than the ones in sweat pants because the guys in sweat pants and petites are in jail right now. The men and women wearing suits and standing in the halls of Congress, who effectively want to go down the same path have faced no consequences whatsoever.

Brian: We'll continue in a minute with Amanda Carpenter and more of your calls stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC on this January 6th, 2022, as we continue with Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark, which if you don't know it is a news and opinion site founded by conservatives such as Charlie Sykes who maybe you know, he did some hosting here on WNYC, conservatives who did not support Donald Trump. Carpenter is also a CNN political commentator and was before 2015, previously communications director for Senator Ted Cruz.

Her most recent articles on The Bulwark site are one that she was just characterizing about a war of all against all within the Republican Party as she sees it, and the one sarcastically titled The Good Coup about the attempt to overturn the election through legal if cringe-worthy and pro-fascistic means. Eddie in Freepoint, you're on WNYC with Amanda Carpenter. Hi, Eddie.

Eddie: Hi, I'm Eddie. I agree that it was a riot. You want to call it an insurrection. My problem was with most coup attempts, and insurrections are much more violent, much more organized, much more with the weaponry in this country, which is unbelievable. Wouldn't that classify more as a riot than an insurrection? Maybe it's just a terminology? I do believe it was a horrible incident. [unintelligible 00:22:05]

Brian: Eddie, thank you. I guess, Amanda, he's almost getting to a public relations question. Does it turn more Republicans who still think the election was stolen? Large majority of Republicans around the country, not just Republican politicians, believe that the election was stolen by the Democrats, believe the big lie. Would it not help more to not what he sees as overreaching by using the word 'coup' which we might associate with something more like Pinochet or something like that somewhere in the world?

Amanda Carpenter: Well, if you want to stay on the safe as broadest ground, you can call it a riot. In the January 6th committee, in their investigation into those events, when they talk about Donald Trump's role, they talk about whether he incited a riot or not. I don't think it's a question of language when it comes to judging where Republicans will stand on that event because in the immediate aftermath of January 6th Republican leaders absolutely understood the gravity of the situation.

You can see that by the statements that were made by the then the leaders of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and the leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who directly laid responsibility for that event on Trump. Then, very soon after, rehabilitated him and said that they would once again support him as a potential nominee for president in 2024. That is not a question of language. It's a question of personal political motivation.

Brian: Why do you think most Republicans, including 88% of Trump voters in the recent Washington Post poll, believe the big lie? Nobody's ever shown any compelling evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump's otherwise loyal Attorney General William Barr said that and the courts were never presented with such evidence in more than 60 court challenges to the election before Biden was sworn in.

There are some, and I would say, I think, more people of color in this country than white people think, "Hey, look, this is part of what America has always been. Trump's just running to the head of the parade." What would you say about the idea that the rot is really in Republican America, not in Donald Trump or in Donald Trump, but that Donald Trump is just a reflection of the rot in Republican America?

Amanda Carpenter: Well, I think we just start with the fact for this particular part of the conversation take the Republican people who have an 'R' behind their name professionally out of it and let's talk about the typical Republican voter. If you are a person who supported Donald Trump twice, and generally like what he has done for America, and also live in this cultural soup where you are told that conservatives are always discriminated against, whether in the media, academia, the courts, et cetera, and then the president you supported twice prime's you for the possibility of elections being rigged against him, and then tells you over and over and over and over and over that it was, you're probably going to believe him.

You're probably going to believe the president of the United States, and he has not once let off from that narrative. It got spun out by a lot of other Republican leaders through those Georgia Senate races, which I believe served as a critical staging ground for the big election lie. You put that together with the pandemic that was happening, and there were things happening in the States, which I supported, to expand the right to vote in a pandemic, because we wanted to make sure that no one would lose the ability to vote because of COVID. There's a lot of mistrust that was exploited. Donald Trump is a master manipulator and he's manipulated millions of people into believing this big election lie.

Brian: Lou on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lou.

Lou: Good morning, Brian. Good morning to the guest. I have been following this January 6th riot ever since it took place. I was awake that day and I saw it live on television in my cafeteria. The question I keep asking myself is, and now to the guest, how did we get here in the first place that someone like the former president, this man who is permanently incompetent, permanently [unintelligible 00:27:12] totally lacking in everything that a decent society should promote, how did he get to be in that office in the first place? How did the United States get here? That's the question I keep asking myself and I can't find the answer to it so far. Maybe the guest can help me find an answer. How did we get here in the first place? Where were the gatekeepers of the democracy that this country so holds up?

Brian: I think you're going to have to write a book, Amanda, to answer this question. Where to start.

Amanda Carpenter: I think the easiest possible explanation is that the Republican Party, it goes back to this question of how unified or divided it really is. That 2015 Republican primary field had a lot of candidates, a lot of candidates, and Donald Trump was essentially able to cruise through that process with a hardcore 30% committed majority that would never leave him, nobody could take away from him, and that the Republican Party as a block needs to turn out elections because they are the base.

He always understood the base, and how to keep them committed to him. At that point, when all the other Republicans look around and say, "I can't win without Trump's voters. I cannot create a coalition without those voters and win," at that point he has all the power, even though he only controls a minority, but it's the most important one. That's my best explanation. Then also, he got lucky to run against Hillary Clinton. I understand in New York and across the country there's a lot of dedicated Hillary Clinton supporters. It was always going to be impossible that she would be able to attract enough Republican voters to win that general election.

Brian: What will change this? What you described goes beyond Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump got even more votes in 2020 than he got in 2016 although he lost, and the scenario just laid out is it's almost like a parliamentary system in another country where a minority can leverage policy because that minority is needed in the coalition to keep the leaders in power. That's I think what you're describing within the Republican Party. How does the republican party, the party that you've worked for a long time get past that.

Amanda Carpenter: Well, this was part of the strategy of very smart Republicans who oppose Trump in 2020, was to work with other Republicans to say, "It's okay to vote for the Democrats this time." You don't have to become a Democrat to say no to this terrible wing of the party. We're going to have to put some things ahead of the party. That's an easier question now [unintelligible 00:30:36] are looking for hope. It's an easier proposition to put to Republicans after January 6th in saying we can't go down this road any further.

You don't need that many Republicans in a general election to be successful with this message. You really maybe only need 1% to 3% in the right states and at the right time to defeat that wing of the party. It does require allowing Republicans the option of supporting a Democrat that might be more moderate such as Joe Biden. I mean, really, Joe Biden was the answer in 2020. I personally do not believe any other Democrat could have beat Trump in 2020.

The concern going forward is whether Joe Biden would be strong enough to do that again in 2024. If it's not him, who would it be? If Bernie Sanders would have gotten the Democratic nomination for president, Republicans like me couldn't have asked other Republicans to say, "This time you can vote. This time, would you please consider voting for the Democrat." That would have been impossible because it would have been a bridge too far.

Brian: Though I know, and we don't have to get into this conversation, that there are plenty of Bernie Sanders supporters who would say he would have drawn out a base that was more passionate than Biden could ever draw out and that would have overtaken the math that you just described, we'll leave that as a conversation that people will continue to have in the background. Tim in Brooklyn is calling in. Going back to the clip that we played at the beginning of the segment.

Listeners, if you didn't hear it, it was Trump ally Peter Navarro from an appearance on TV this week in which he just said out loud what the plan for January 6th really was, not the riot, but the plan to have Congress vote to send the election results back to some of the swing states for another review rather than certifying Biden's election and hope that those state leaders or state legislators decided that in their opinion there was enough election fraud not to certify the election and then it would have gone to the House of Representatives where Trump might have won. That was the theory, Peter Navarro just said it out loud and Tim in Brooklyn has a question about that. Tim, you're on WNYC.

Tim: Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Amanda, for being a reasonable Republican talking about reasonable issues. [chuckles] I just wanted to say that I have some gratitude here for Peter Navarro and even Donald Trump. What they're doing, I think, if we look historically, is we're going to say they pointed out the problems in our electoral process. We're having a chance here to address them. They're also pointing out the problem in coalition building. Republican Party built this beast and now they're going to have to deal with it.

One thing that may happen, I think, Amanda pointed to is that brave Republicans are going to have to come out and start their own party in order to combat this. What we might see is another Democrat win in 2024 as a result. I'm actually grateful for Navarro for putting it all out there. We need some law changes and I think that even McConnell is starting to show a little bit of courage in that department. I don't know if you would agree that historically, we might look back at this as a positive.

Brian: What's the courage that you're referring to with respect to McConnell? It's not voting rights. What is it?

Tim: No, no, I think it was just today he was saying that he was interested in revisiting some of the rules around the Electoral College certification process which is really worth

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Amanda Carpenter: Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Brain: Is that what they call the Count Act, Amanda?

Amanda Carpenter: Yes, the Electoral Count Act. I think this caller is spot on. What allowed the objections to happen on January 6th was provisions in the Electoral Count Act which allows just one senator and just one member of the House of Representatives to object to the counts delivered by a state and stop the counting of votes that day and throw each chamber into a two-hour debate. This is exactly what Navarro was trying to exploit because they had people lined up in the House and the Senate who would object to each state, potentially, or a few of the states.

We don't really know because they didn't get to go further down in that process. This was exactly the delay. One of the reforms that I think has been absolutely necessary in is there's some interest by some Republicans, I don't know if this is for show, honestly, to delay the Voting Rights Bill changes that Schumer is contemplating or if they're actually serious. If they are serious, there should be legislation, reforms made to that act that would increase the threshold to stop the counting of votes. I don't know what that number should be but it certainly should take more than one senator and one member of the House to stop that process.

Brian: Without that then Marjorie Taylor Greene might as well be the President of the United States at that particular moment.

Amanda Carpenter: Let's not get carried away.

Brian: Last question for today. Amanda, the Democrats are using this January 6th anniversary in part to publicize their push for voting rights legislation in Congress following the attempt to overturn people's votes. I'm curious how you see the shift in your party on this issue, because as recently as 2006, as I'm sure you know, the Senate voted 98 to nothing to renew the Voting Rights Act with its requirement for preclearance of any voting law changes in states and localities that had histories of voting rights violations.

It was a lot of southern states, it was New York City, a lot of people don't know that. The Supreme Court in 2013 throughout the old version of that requirement, but Congress could revise it and renew it with the current John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, the Democrats say. How did the GOP go from zero votes against the Voting Rights Act to zero votes to support it except for Lisa Murkowski?

Amanda Carpenter: Well, not only that, but the sudden new opposition to mail-in voting which is traditionally something that has benefited the Republican Party who needs to reach voters who are in rural areas, who might not be able to appear in person on election day. Somehow, the bias in the party has completely changed to only wanting people to appear in person, in line at the polls on election day. This is largely just because of how Donald Trump chose to attack the voting process in the 2020 election.

It's really interesting to me because I happen to live in West Virginia. Joe Manchin has presented a voting rights bill which is the compromise between the moderates and the progressives in his party. It's modelled on a lot of West Virginia law that has traditionally been supported and enforced successfully by Republicans. We'll see where this goes but it is incredible to me just tactically that we saw such a sustained attack on voting and democracy. It wasn't just in January 6th. It was the whole starting the summer of 2020, all the way through January 6th. The Democrats have been unable to make any reforms possible on a federal level.

Brian: Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark, thank you so much for joining us. We really, really appreciate it.

Amanda Carpenter: Thank you.

 

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